make head against

make head against (third-person singular simple present makes head against, present participle making head against, simple past and past participle made head against)

1. (obsolete) To attack, take up arms against.
   • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, Act III, Scene 1,

     Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head

     Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye

     And sandy-bottom’d Severn have I sent him

     Bootless home and weather-beaten back.

   • 1740, William Oldys, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, London, p. 28,

     The next, whose Fate drew on, was Sir James Desmond, who, on the Fourth of August in the above mentioned Year, having made an Inroad upon Muskerry, and taken a great Booty from Sir Cormac Mac Teige, Sheriff of Cork; the said Sheriff making Head against him, recover’d the Booty, wounded Sir James mortally, and took him Prisoner.

   • 1896, Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands, Part 3, Chapter Two,

     When I tried to put some heart into him, telling him he had four big guns—you know the brass six-pounders you left here last year—and that I would get powder, and that, perhaps, together we could make head against Lakamba, he simply howled at me.

2. (figuratively) To resist, oppose.
   • 1600, Thomas Walkington (attributed), An Exposition of the Two First Verses of the Sixt Chapter to the Hebrewes in Forme of a Dialogue, London: Thomas Man, Sermon 26, p. 348,

     Such is then this gallaunt and holie confidence of the spouse to braue her enemies, in whose person the Apostle speaking, wee see […] how hee beareth downe euerie high thing which presumeth to make head against God […]

   • 1715, Richard Bulstrode,“Of Religion” in Miscellaneous Essays, London: Jonas Browne, p. 307,

     […] if Children were early instructed, Knowledge would insensibly insinuate it self before their Years had arm’d them with Obstinacy enough to make Head against it.

   • 1844, Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter 23,

     […] if he began to brood over their miseries instead of trying to make head against them there could be little doubt that such a state of mind would powerfully assist the influence of the pestilent climate.

   • 1962, Aldous Huxley, Island, London: Chatto & Windus, Chapter Fifteen, p. 280,

     There was strength enough, he could see, in that small frame to make head against any suffering; a will that would be more than a match for all the swords that fate might stab her with.